ABSTRACT
Melancholy as a form of lovesickness in the work of the selected diasporic Somali writers emerges not in respect of a person, but in respect of a place, namely the city of Mogadishu. Mogadishu, the capital of the southern, formerly Italian-administered, part of Somalia, has acquired enormous symbolic capital in a wide range of expressions, including fiction, poetry, theater, and film. Representations of Mogadishu occur in the work of many of the writers mentioned, often in the form of the nostalgic recollections of diasporic characters in their narratives. The alternative history of Somalia offered by Farah is constructed around a representation of Mogadishu centered on the Tamarind Market at its heart. The obscurity of the etymology of the word “tamarind” and the history of the name, “Tamarind Market,” is a productive uncertainty which symbolizes the openness of this multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan market that comes to be extended to the city as a whole.
